Time investment assessment

Brainscape ^© development (beta—September 2010)

This page offers the opportunity to step outside your normal day-to-day experiences and mentally travel a “brainroad” toward your tomorrowS—in a world relentlessly moving toward unimagined futureS.

Day-to-day experiences tend to trap people in yesterday.

Examples of being stranded in yesterday flow through the news daily.

Without some kind of forceful intervention we just keep repeating …

This is essentially a state of rigidity.

Only you can be responsible for developing yourself and preparing for different tomorrowS.



Nobody else is going to do it for you.

It should be a life-long process.

It seems that your development should be guided by the way the world works—in the years ahead and not the way it worked in the past.

I think you can count on rapid technological change, increasing competition because of globalization, and tremendous innovation.

At the same time knowledge is constantly making itself obsolete.

If you investigate Warren Buffett’s investment practices you’ll find that he generally avoids tech stocks because of their vulnerability.

How can these conflicting views be reconciled?

See Peter Drucker’s Management, Revised Edition

It’s not possible to invest time in something that’s not on your radar.

Some kind of valuable radar enhancement is needed.

Unfortunately there are no answers—just alternatives and a constantly receding horizon.

Systematically try to pick a good alternative that fits you and the needs of the current reality.

When you’re far enough along with your current alternative try to pick another good alternative that fits the new you and the needs of the then current reality.

Repeat some kind of loop similar to the preceding.

This is not meant to be a prescription, but merely suggest a pattern.

Far too many people work on too many things and don’t build on their strengths.

Try to change when you’re successful.

Don’t wait until you’re in trouble.

Getting results (in the outside world) requires concentration of efforts not splintering.

Larger view

If the concept of unimagined futures is troubling, imagine how the worldS of yesterdayS compare to today’s world and reality.

Why would tomorrow’s worldS and realities be linear extrapolations of today if today’s world and realities isn’t a linear extrapolation of yesterdayS?

The objections “we’re doing great", “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” or, “this whatever” has worked well for X years are irrelevant to an unfolding, non-linear world.

Adopting these approaches wastes whatever lead time you may have before the next conceptual “tsunami.”

Larger view

Reality dimensions

The curves on the image above represents the rise and fall of a reality.

Each of the three curves are the same size and that is a distortion of reality.

In recent years, in certain ares of the economy, the curves have been more compact.

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Its not just the outside world that becomes unimagined futureS.

Life is messy—sometimes very messy.

Few capable people turn out to have predictable lives.

Having a dream or plan is very likely to be futile.

Having a work approach (as an example) that anticipates this messiness may be much more helpful.

Whatever your approach, you want to make a special effort to not end up in a significant regretful situation created by devoting many years to a sinking organization or unhealthy situation.

These situations can take various forms—they are in the news repeatedly.

See organization evolution stories.

See if you can spot other forms by regularly trolling the news and making notes. Calendarize having something valuable to offer FUTURE (2015, 2020, 2025 …) “employers” or clients.

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Creating new vistas: This page offers a brainroad or brainscape to potentially add to your time investment radar and your overall brainscape.

To get something really useful you should be reading this slowly and thinking.

If you were to revisit this page on a regular basis your brainscape would be enhanced by the conceptual terrain here and your life experiences between visits.

Again reading slowly and thinking on repeat visits will be very useful.

With each concept try to stop and look around—things you’ve seen and read recently.

The very fact that you’ve read this has potentially opened new vision avenues.

According to Edward de Bono “the human brain can only see what it is prepared to see.

If the brain contains complex concepts then we can perceive the world through these concepts: this is perception.”

And every time you navigate any brainscape or brainroad there are new and richer perceptions and its not because you just see more of what’s there.

Brainscape ^© snapshot = page topic + ideas in this brainscape development section. If these snapshots were strung together into a movie you would have a partial brain timescape ^©.

Assessment (beta—September 2010)

Is the subject of this page an area you want on your radar?

Is this an area in which you want to invest further time—a time investment?

If yes, in what depth and when?

What foundation for future directed decisions is needed?

What calendarization is necessary to have a work approach that is adequate to the challenges ahead?

How will you track your time investments?

A couple of Peter Drucker’s books contain the following: (a variation)

I suggest you read a chapter (topic) at a time and then first ask:

What do these issues, these challenges MEAN for our organization and for me as a knowledge worker, a professional, an executive?

Once you have thought this through, ask:

What ACTION should our organization and I, the individual knowledge worker and/or executive, take to make the challenges of this chapter (topic) into OPPORTUNITIES for our organization and me?

AND THEN GO TO WORK!

How about a separate thinking canvas for each element in this paragraph?

Larger view of challenge thinking

A phrase that repeatedly shows up in Drucker’s work: “think through.” What additional thinking is necessary?

If this is not an area for aggressive time investment what can be done to cope with the implied dynamics, changes or developments …

Just reading is not enough …

Harvesting and action thinking are needed …

Larger view of image below

more …

Key Links for Site Exploration

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rlaexp.com’s purpose is to provide a big picture thinking landscape for navigating our changing world — a world in profound transition.

There are 500+ pages inter-weaving management, leadership, organization evolution, the evolving content and structure of society, knowledge, technology, career evolution, education, learning, marketing, production, innovation, entrepreneurship, thinking, software tools, information challenges, concepts to daily action … through time. Any time someone is engaged in decision thinking they need a “foundation for future directed decisions.” ^©

rlaexp.com is largely inspired by the work of Peter Drucker and a few others.

The site provides a “menu” for identifying important “things” to work toward that largely go unseen.

We can only work on, with and toward the “things” on our active “mental radar.”

In a changing world, we need a way to repeatedly look beyond current mental involvements.

We need a way to think about things we aren’t already thinking about at multiple points in time. Waiting for a crisis is one way to accomplish this, but surely there are better ways.

rlaexp.com’s uniquely broad landscape is designed to meet this challenge.

TomorrowS can’t be reached by today’s activities or thinking. Examples constantly flow through the news.

Who in 1950, 1970, 1990, 2000 … had an adequate future facing radar?

Why would today be any different?

Where and how we spend our time matters — a world in constant flux.

 

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I’m trying to provide this exploration and thinking landscape to help people figure out what to do as we move deeper into the 21st century: a knowledge society, a society of organizations, and a network society.

America’s future depends on this awareness, ability and effective action.

It depends on younger generations having access to this dynamic type thinking and doing something effective. rlaexp.com provides the access and a work approach model.

Just about everybody enters the world of work through known, routine, day-to-day operating work at a point in time. It never seems to occur to nearly anybody that there could be anything else. How could we ever acquire a strategic, dynamic worldview from our beginning vantage points?

Pretending that tomorrow is going to be like yesterday is damaging.

Everybody has a vested interest in this.

For the site to remain available your support is needed. Your support helps with the books, software, web site hosting, and the time devoted to publicizing and enhancing the work approach available on rlaexp.com.

Who do you know that might be interested in working with me on spreading site usage and enhancement?

For the right kind of people, rlaexp.com provides the elements of a future facing consulting or mentoring practice. Contact info is near the bottom of most pages.

At the present time this is a prototype site.

There are over 500 web-pages — unique web addresses. If each page contained only 10 valuable thoughts, then there could be over 5,000 different brain-addresses in your brain-address book.

Think of everything here as a mental placeholder — a way to see and think beyond the familiar.

Seeing beyond the familiar is necessary to avoid mental stagnation and navigate a changing world — 180-degree change.

The ideas you run across aren’t just
things to read. They are things (horizons) to translate into
effective action — over time.

“If you hesitate to map out your future,
to make a big plan or to set a goal,
you’ve just gone ahead and
mapped your future anyway” — Seth Goden

Since the site is still a prototype, some pages may be less than visually appealing — it’s the content that matters.

I add, remove, and redesign content based on my own unfolding comprehension of the time-life navigation ^© (TLN) landscape.

… and then I move on to a new or different attention directing area.

I’ve been collecting and organizing information — full-time — for over thirty years.

New landscape features periodically emerge and existing features get reshaped — e.g. how we take, share, and manage photos.

This means that you might want to periodically revisit relevant pages — as a way to change what you’re paying attention to.

Many of the books that were available when I first started working on what I now call “time-life navigation” have gone out of print or are hard to find.

You can still use the content of the book outline pages to identify topics of interest and to search Amazon Books or elsewhere for topics or phrases.

Having alternative mental landscapes is a good thing.

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